It was such a nice day

.. And I slept in and missed something else I had planned, so I went out and Played radio instead.

A quick look on sotawatch and noted a few people out and about, so a quick dash up to Mt Gawler – VK5/SE-013 after I had a great time yesterday. Arrived around 01:00 UTC and just had a bit of a listen around the bands for a couple of hours,

Finally, saw a spot for VK3HRA on VK3/VT-013 and jumped on for a S2S contact. At this point the charsers realized I was about to I moved up 5khz and put out a call to work a steady stream of takers over the next 30-40 minutes. A lot of regular chasers in there and another S2S with VK1NAM on VK1/AC-027

Worked a few more – for a total of 25 contacts from VK1, VK2, VK3 and VK5 stations, most on 40M , but gave a quick call on 20M before leaving for the last couple of contacts who could not hear me on 40 before heading home for a late lunch.

When we got home, I turned on and had a quick listen around the bands – only to be confronted by my usual S9+ on 40M and S7-9 on 20M noise. Yep, Mt Gawler, only 10km away is a whole different experience.

After Lunch, made the rash decision to shoot up to Mt Lofty – VK5/SE-005 to see if we could work a bit of Europe on 20M if it was open.

And work Europe we did! Found a clear frequency – as 20M was quite busy – put out a call and self-spotted. For the next 40 minutes worked 29 EU stations. There were a whole lot more but really had a hard time pulling callsigns out of the pile-up at times! It was 0710 to 0748 UTC, which was the last hour before sunset here.

I didn’t log who, but I did have 1 station say that I was their First VK SOTA summit, quite a few saying that it was a new summit for them as well.

The noise started coming up and a couple of strong stations who could not hear me came up on the frequency, but given the sun was just starting to go down, I called it quits on 20M and dropped the dipole and unwound it for 40M and pushed it back up.

Again, a single spot and a 10 minute mad dash on 40M and had another 13 calls from VK1,2,3 and 5’s in the log.

A quiet RF environment for RX, a 10W Radio and calling CQ sota when EU is open – Fun! Today was the first day that I have really used the KX3 – and Yes, it is a great little radio for taking portable – a great RX and very easy to operate all-band, it might just be the perfect portable 🙂

Given that the days are starting to get longer, and Mt Gawler is a lot closer for me to get to, I can see me jumping up there maybe on a few week days and calling on 20M as well and seeing how that goes.